Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano says he was trying to reduce his budget when he terminated James Wallace.

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

An appointee fired by Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano secretly recorded conversations in the office in the months before he was let go, saying the situation had deteriorated so badly that he needed proof of what was said.

That revelation, contained in new depositions, doesn’t disclose the exact conversations in the recordings, but their existence adds a Nixonian air to a scandal that already has led to two guilty pleas to bribery, an obstruction of justice conviction and an undated letter on old stationery to justify a $200,000 severance payout.

James Wallace, a former graphic artist in Ficano’s communications department, said in a lawsuit deposition that he hid a Sony Mini Disc recorder in his pocket and wired a microphone through his shirt to capture the conversations.

“Because things were getting so bad at that point, and I think I needed something to back up, you know,” Wallace said in an August 2012 deposition. “Because the people that you work with, I believe, would tend to lie if I ever said, you know, that this happened, so it was to the point where it was so bad where I thought I had to.”

Ficano said he was trying to reduce his budget when he terminated Wallace and about a dozen other people in January 2012. Wallace sued five months later, claiming he was let go for refusing to do political work on county time.

By that time, Ficano already had been under fire for several months. In September 2011, he sparked controversy when he acknowledged paying a $200,000 severance to former chief development officer Turkia Awada Mullin when she left the county to become CEO of Metro Airport. Ficano initially said the payment was a contractual obligation, but then called it a mistake and demanded its return.

After Mullin sued the airport for wrongful discharge, Ficano testified in her case that the contract was binding. Mullin won her lawsuit against the airport late last month, receiving a $712,000 award from an arbitrator.

Wallace claims members of Ficano’s inner circle forced him to work on county time on Ficano political materials and on publications for Ficano’s nonprofit Vision Fund, which later became the Robert A. Ficano Hope Foundation. Wallace insists the Vision Fund was a marketing tool for Ficano’s political career.

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After Wallace repeatedly complained that the nonprofit work wasn’t allowed on county time, according to his lawsuit, his supervisors at the time — Lynn Ingram and Tom Downey — called him into a meeting with Timothy Taylor, then the county’s director of human resources.

In the deposition, Wallace gave his take on the meeting: “I thought he was saying, like, legally, there is a gray area and a loophole that we can do this stuff, and it’s not illegal. My personal belief was that I didn’t feel comfortable doing it. I did not feel comfortable doing it, I stated that. I believe I stated that I will not do this stuff or I won’t do political work or this stuff at the county or on county hours. If I do it, I will do it at home, and I’ll be paid for it because it’s a separate entity from Wayne County.”

The county has denied that Wallace was ever pressured to do political work on county time, though officials have acknowledged they told Wallace it was fine to work for nonprofits as long as they benefited county residents.